


the rising tides can touch us.

by riskbreakered



Category: Penny Dreadful (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-03
Updated: 2016-08-03
Packaged: 2018-07-29 00:06:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7662442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riskbreakered/pseuds/riskbreakered
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“For this moment, this one moment, we are together. I press you to me. Come, pain, feed on me. Bury your fangs in my flesh. Tear me asunder. I sob, I sob.”</i> — Virginia Woolf</p>
            </blockquote>





	the rising tides can touch us.

"What was your friend's name?" The cut-wife's voice is demanding, bereft of any sort of motherly tenderness.

"Mina," Vanessa says stubbornly. Willful girl, she will leave these moors only after she's found the answer she needs.

"Have you kissed her?"

" _Yes._ "

Even after so long, there are things she cannot bring herself to regret.

* * *

She keeps Mina's memory close, in a box underneath her bed; they are only letters, marked with her friend's last address now long in its expiration. Her hand quakes as she pulls the cigarette away from her mouth, a cloud of smoke escaping from her lips in impatient bursts. Vanessa's pen hand keeps steady to the paper.

It is a familiar confession, no less passionate than the one she speaks to God. The penance she might find in either is, of course, uncertain; but here, alone in her room, Vanessa wonders if Mina cannot imagine her dutiful longing, her remorse. Hopes, perhaps, that the bond they share can extend such feelings even across so much distance.

* * *

Forever in her memory this beach shall remain as theirs. Laughter folded in the sounds of waves, commingling with a rough afternoon tide. Mina's hand in hers. A child's innocence.

(Or perhaps, everything whispered in shadow being true, she never had been. Had always wanted this, this alone. Her and Mina, together as this, purely and forever.)

Vanessa, scarf pulled tight over her hair, hears no laughter now. Spies no twin path of children's footsteps though she tries. She is alone. She thinks she has paid the price of her wickedness.

Something calls at her, a voice rising over the sound of the water. A cry for help.

Mina reaches out her hand, and she is nearly able to grasp it.

* * *

For the very last evening they remain together. The two have partied, they have drunk their share of wine. Her friend lies asleep now, gentle and trusting in Vanessa's arms. (You ought never trust the kindness of a scorpion, the parables tell.)

She remains awake, watching over her. Her arm is wrapped around Mina's waist, possessive though the fiance remains just downstairs, lost for the moment in the tide of late evening conversation. He waits to take his claim, Vanessa knows. She kisses Mina's hair and the other woman sighs and shifts in the embrace.

After another moment, Vanessa carefully rises from the bed and quietly leaves the room.

* * *

Mina's hand is on her throat, her other arm wrapped around Vanessa's waist as if to lay claim to her instead; a cruel embrace, a scene played in reverse. There are teeth against the fair flesh of her throat, and Vanessa understands for the first and last time all of what she has done and what she has lost.

This is to be their final parting.

Sir Malcolm raises his pistol, tears in his eyes.

* * *

"You are a selfish girl", the cut-wife spits out over dinner. There is admonition to her voice; but also, perhaps, a sliver of understanding.

Vanessa looks down and can't meet the woman's gaze; she understands the darkness lingering in her own heart and knows this to be true.

She will save Mina regardless, whatever she must do. (She must have her back.)


End file.
